Virginians must reflect on the lessons learned from the crisis in leadership playing out in Richmond

Virginia is being skewered by a national spotlight that illuminates questions involving four of its most powerful politicians.

Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring have both admitted to wearing makeup that darkened their faces during parties held in the 1980s. And Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is fending off allegations he sexually assaulted two women on separate occasions.

We have also learned Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment, R-James City, was the editor of a college yearbook in 1968 that included racially insensitive images and captions.

These revelations and attendant accusations have fomented a crisis of leadership that resurrects haunting questions about race and sexual equality.

We cannot expect elected officials to have absolutely pristine pasts but they are also our chosen representatives and as such must be held to a higher standard.

The admissions by Messrs. Northam and Herring evoke a visceral reaction given this commonwealth’s history of prejudicial treatment toward African Americans and other minority communities.

Any white person darkening their face in jest does so with the weight of this commonwealth’s history caked into the boot-black they wear.

When the rest of the county was integrating schools in the 1950s, Virginia chose to pass a group of Massive Resistance laws that kept public schools segregated well into the late 1960s.

Virginia fought against interracial marriages until the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, which struck down state laws banning interracial marriage.

One doesn’t need to even look beyond this century to find examples of Virginia’s racial prejudice and animus.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled burning a cross can be construed as an act of intimidation — meaning it is not always protected by the 1st Amendment — after it was presented with a challenge to two cases that originated in Virginia.

In 2006, George Allen’s political career came to a screeching halt when he directed the racially tinged slur "macaca" to an opponent’s campaign aide of Indian descent.

Like it or not, the governor and attorney general are stumbling along the same path.

Mr. Northam admitted Feb. 2 of darkening his face to portray Michael Jackson during a 1984 dance contest only after a photo surfaced on his medical school yearbook page showing one man wearing blackface and the other wearing a KKK costume. Mr. Northam has said he is neither man in the photo.

Mr. Herring revealed on Wednesday to wearing makeup to darken his skin as a 19-year-old undergraduate student in the 1980s in order to portray a rap artist.

Both politicians said they did not understand the ramifications of their actions at the time. But indifference and ignorance are not viable excuses.

Mr. Herring’s admission is particularly troubling considering he called for Mr. Northam’s resignation just five days earlier.

While some could argue that the acts happened in the 1980s, these men were at an age where common sense should have prevailed, regardless of the decade.

Should Mr. Northam resign from office, his lieutenant is also tangled in an imbroglio involving allegations he sexually assaulted a woman while working on John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

His allegations are tied on Misters’ Herring and Northam only in their close timeframe, and they must be scrutinized through a different filter.

Mr. Fairfax has denied the allegations, and an at least one of his accuses has retained an attorney. No charges were filed after either alleged incident.

The first woman approached the Washington Post in 2017 — which Mr. Fairfax as described as being consensual — and the newspaper was unable to corroborate her account. It did not publish a story until after the allegations against Mr. Fairfax became public last week.

A second woman is alleging Mr. Fairfax raped her in 2000 while both were students at Duke University.

He must call for the state to assemble an independent team of investigators to look into accusations against him, then it must publicly issue a report to its findings.

All three men can walk down redemptive paths, although many of those paths do not parallel time in public office.

Sen. Norment may ultimately learn of his fate during the November election when all 140 legislative seats are on the ballot.

The revelations of Messrs. Northam and Herring — and the allegations against Mr. Fairfax — are an embarrassing burden for Virginians. And they have thrown the state’s successions of power into a tailspin.

Politicians in this commonwealth ascribe to The Virginia Way, a sense of restrained statesmanship and high-minded legislating that puts the principles of the common-man legislators over party politics. These troubling events have resulted in a miasma that has turned that principle on its head.

Because of their improprieties, Misters Herring and Northam must resign. And Mr. Fairfax must call for an investigation into allegations against him.